Quiet faith lies behind satirist’s blowhard facade

When comedian Stephen Colbert brought his act to Capitol Hill in
September and stole the spotlight with his satirical shtick, no one was
more surprised than lawmakers. "You run your show," scolded House
Judiciary Com­mittee chairman John Conyers, "we run the committee."

When
Colbert finally let his well-coiffed hair down and got serious about
the "really, really hard work" done by migrant farmworkers, even more
people were surprised when the funnyman gave a glimpse of his private
faith.

"And, you know, 'whatsoever you do for the least of my
brothers,' and these seem like the least of our brothers right now,"
Colbert said, quoting Jesus. "Migrant workers suffer and have no
rights."

It was a different kind of religious message than Colbert typically delivers on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, where
he often pokes fun at religion—even his own Catholic Church—in pursuit
of a laugh. Yet it was the kind of serious faith that some of his
fellow Catholics say makes him a serious, covert and potent evangelist
for their faith.

"Anytime you talk about Jesus or Christianity
respectfully the way he does, it is evangelization," said Jim Martin,
associate editor of the Jesuit magazine America, who has
appeared on Colbert's show four times. "He is preaching the gospel, but
I think he is doing it in a very postmodern way."

It's a contrast
to Glenn Beck, the kind of right-wing media icon Colbert loves to
skewer. While Beck's recent Restoring Honor rally in Washington was
headed by a conservative broadcaster who embraces a mix of theological
patriotism, Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive on October 30 was
planned by a man of more private faith who leaves his God-and-country
religion in the television studio.

Colbert has said that he
attends church, observes Lent and teaches Sunday school. "I love my
church, and I'm a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were
very devout," he told Time Out magazine. "I was raised to believe that you could question the church and still be a Catholic."

His
on-air persona is a bloviating holier-than-thou conservative whose
orthodox Catholicism is part of what makes him funny. On air, Colbert
has chided the pope as an "ecu-menace" for his outreach to other
faiths, referred to non-Catholics as "heathens and the excommunicated"
and called those who believe in evolution "monkey men."

Writer-editor
Diane Houdek has tracked Colbert's on-air references to Catholicism on
her blog, Catholic Colbert. When he recites the Nicene Creed or Bible
verses from memory, as he did in 2006, it shows how foundational his
faith is, she said.

"He is moving in an extremely secular
world—it is hard to get a lot more secular than Comedy Central," Houdek
said. "Yet I feel he is able to witness to his faith in a very subtle
way, a very quiet way to an audience that has maybe never encountered
this before."

It's particularly powerful to Cath­olics, Houdek
said, when the lines blur between Colbert's personal faith and that of
his on-air alter ego. She pointed to a 2007 segment in which his
character reveled in Pope Benedict XVI's statement that non-Catholic
faiths were "defective." "Catholicism is clearly superior," Colbert
crowed beside a picture of the pope. "Don't believe me? Name one
Protestant denomination that can afford a $660 million sexual abuse
settlement." It wasn't just funny, but "powerful," Houdek said. "He
really made a strong criticism of the church."

Colbert's personal
opinions about Catholicism are not usually so clearly displayed, and
his variety of guests offers little clues. His Catholic guests have
ranged from the theological left—openly gay Catholic writer Andrew
Sullivan—to the far right—Catholic League president William Donohue.

Houdek
said she regularly fields comments from readers who believe they've
found a fellow traveler in Col­bert. "You can't pin him down," Houdek
said. "He becomes kind of a Rorschach test for what the viewer's
beliefs are."

Colbert's show also tackles the difficult questions
that Catholicism and other religions try to answer. With Martin as a
guest, he has wrestled with poverty, the value of suffering and the
role of doubt in faith. "He manages to raise the big questions very
deftly," Martin said. "I think that is a great catechesis for many
people because he might be reaching Catholics who never go to church,
and he is speaking to them in language they can understand."

Kurt
C. Wiesner, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Littleton, New
Hampshire, writes a blog about religion and popular culture. Watching
Colbert's congressional testimony, he saw something that reaches beyond
Catholicism.

"He offered a human witness, without a doubt,"
Wiesner said. "He gave witness to what Christians are often called to
do, but the message isn't be a Christian like him. It is that one's
faith calls us to be engaged with our fellow human beings." —RNS